RECOGNITION

William Gill was elected to the Royal Geographical Society on 26th January 1874, having applied 12 months previously. On his return from Romania, he received an invitation to present a paper to the Society. His reply of 21st March 1878 was written on headed paper from the Junior United Service Club, London S.W., where Gill had lived, but with the heading crossed out and the following address substituted:

At a meeting of the R.G.S. at its Savile Row headquarters the following month, Captain Gill read his paper. It dealt with his recent travels in western China and the eastern borders of Tibet. ‘The fertile province of Szchuen and the great variety of its products were minutely and graphically described, as well as the curious appearance and habits of the wild border tribes,’ said a report of the meeting. ‘Sir Rutherford Alcock, Sir Henry Rawlinson, and other members of the society, congratulated Captain Gill on the result of his journey, during which he had made an elaborate series of observations of the heights of the mountains of the high plateau he had crossed.’

The following year, while away in Turkey, Captain Gill was awarded the Founder’s Medal of the R.G.S. This took place at the Anniversary Meeting of the Society, held in the Hall of the University of London, Burlington Gardens, on Monday 26th May 1879 at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and was followed by dinner at 6 in the evening.

As the notice of the meeting stated, William Gill’s medal was awarded ‘for the important Geographical work he has performed during two long journeys of Exploration, voluntarily undertaken, along the northern frontier of Persia in 1873, and in Western China and Tibet in 1877; and especially for the traverse-survey made by him during the latter journey, and the very complete maps of his route, in forty-two sheets, on a scale of two miles to the inch.’ The medal was accepted on Gill’s behalf by General Sir J. Linthorn A. Simmons, R.E., G.C.B., K.C.B.